Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

• Jonah 3:6 – Jonah 4:4

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
…
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

• Matthew 5:21-22, 43-48

I have no idea if Jonah had a pet name for the Ninevites.  But maybe that is the root of “Ninny” instead of Ninny being short for Nincompoop.  I doubt if a Ninevite would like being called a “Ninny.”

When political correctness first started, the basic target was the names that people were called.  An early Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In episode featured changing the language as to not offend, and that show was from the late 60s.  The “N” word might have been a primary focus, and maybe the last to go (yes, I know there are still pockets of use…).  But all we have done is window dressing.  The hate smolders, maybe even worse, because we have no epithet to use that vents our hatred adequately.  And we so love our cause that hating other causes is not seen as hate.  I know people who speak nothing but hate, but do not call them haters.  They hate that, too.

You say, “No, not me!!”  But everyone does it in one way or another.

Let’s avoid the color argument.  Let’s look at fat people.  Fat people are passed over for promotion.  Fat people are shunned.  Fat people are ridiculed.  Fat people do the same work as skinny people, but they are not paid as much and their clothing costs more than a skinny person’s clothing.  (Check out the racks, and you will discover when the waist size ends and then when you find the larger sizes on the special rack, they are never on sale and always $5-10 more.)  Sure, there are plus size sections in a store and even plus size stores, but at plus size prices.

I think this was one of the best Allan Sherman “bits” that I ever heard, even before I got fat myself.  Allan Sherman’s Hail to Thee, Fat Person.

But where does this calling people names come from?  Well, it has probably been around since Cain and Abel got into a fight when they were both less than ten years old – long before the murder thing.

But the armies of the world use the psychology of name calling to overcome resistance in shooting another human being.  Sure, there is the thought of shoot them before they get a chance to shoot you, but once you make that psychological decision, you will probably already be dead.

But if you can assign a name to someone that is somewhat less than human, then you are simply shooting a thing, a possible harmful thing.  You are not shooting a human at all.  Then there is a greater possibility that you will hate them and less of a possibility in hesitating before you shoot them.

That’s the way you get a farm boy from Arkansas (chosen at random, but I wanted a farm boy that grows crops for this example) in the mode of shooting the enemy.

In World War I, the US was used early in the war as reinforcements.  It was late in the war, at a crucial stage, when the US was allowed to operate as an autonomous unit of their own.  Thus, the derogatory word for the Germans was a French slang word, “Boche.”  Boche is short for portmanteau alboche.  Try saying, “You lousy rotten portmanteau alboche!” a few times while on the front lines.  Nope. Boche was easier to say.  Even portmanteau alboche is French slang for German cabbage heads.

Now, I hope you understand why I picked a farm boy from Arkansas who probably never missed a Sunday at church and rarely missed Wednesday night prayer meetings.  That farm boy saw heads pop up out of the trench on the other side of no man’s land.  He did not see the head of a human being.  He saw a cabbage head.  He saw a lousy, rotten cabbage head.  He may have taken the lousy, rotten cabbage heads on his daddy’s farm and placed them on fence posts and used them for target practice.  He could blow a cabbage head apart from over a hundred yards away.  He would never hesitate in doing so.

You see, name calling dehumanizes the other person.  If they are not humans, then Jesus’ command to love our enemies does not apply.  Jesus said nothing about loving lousy, rotten cabbage heads.

And that is where we are in our society.  We dehumanize everyone that does not agree with precious “us.”  The world has no safe place where disagreement cannot occur unless you simply kill everyone else or dehumanize them so that no one hears their opinion.

Six years ago in the presidential election campaign in the US, one candidate called the supporters of the other candidate, “deplorables.”  You do not consider a deplorable human.  They are scum that you scrape from your shoe – outdoors because you do not wish deplorable residue to enter your home.  I think that candidate lost partly because the deplorables voted against her for calling them deplorables.  She would never represent a deplorable, thus people who were not even deplorables voted against her for fear of being lumped in with the deplorables.  Think about it; once the deplorables are eliminated, who is the next group to hate?

Have you noticed that most presidents voted into office in about the last 25 years were elected by people voting against the other candidate?  Who do you hate less?!?!  It comes down to who can sling the most effective mud without getting muddy hands in the process.  It rarely comes down to having a better idea or better policies.

And what of Christians?  I just finished reading Erwin W. Lutzer’s book, We Will Not Be Silenced.  I will have to admit that I started reading it carefully and about halfway, I became so depressed that I skimmed through the rest.  He goes through how the secular progressives got little things added to other things that did not seem that bad at the time, but then the later interpretations have worked against the Christians and the voice that the Christians have in modern society.  Lutzer’s point was that a Bible believing church must fight back and must be heard.

The two basic attacks, possibly many more, against Christianity stem from the Biblical stand that marriage is between a man and a woman and other unions (sexual or married, etc.) are sinful, and the theory of evolution.  These two are the standard bearers of name calling Christians.

The secular world proposes the “rule” that if you do not celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, you hate them.  There is no middle ground in that you can love the sinner and hate the sin.  No, that is not allowed.  The rules of Logic call that a fallacy, but those go out the window when the one side has the podium, and the other side is not allowed to speak because they HATE.  But the HATE stems from a fallacious argument regarding the rules.

A psychologist said a long time ago that if you say something loud enough and often enough, people will start thinking it true.  That is where we are with evolution.  True science proves that every bit of Darwin’s theory is impossible, but because we have been brainwashed into thinking that evolution is true, we think the true scientist to be an idiot.  Thus, Christians that believe in Creation are IDIOTS.

No, Christians know that sin that is unrepentant sin that prevents you from coming to Jesus to be saved is placing you in a position where you will go to HELL.  Going to hell depends on your relationship with Jesus, but when Jesus is the poster child of “hate”, who wants to go there?  In loving you, the Christian does not wish for you to go to hell.  They show their love by preaching repentance.  It is hard to love the sinner and hate the sin, but it is necessary within the Christian community.

And when you study true science, you will find that evolution and all its tentacles have been long since proven false, at least in anything relating to the origins of any species.  Thus, the true thinkers, those that dig deep enough to understand the foundation of this world will find God there.  They will not find a primordial soup.

The Christian is neither a “hater” or an “idiot,” that is strictly due to being a Christian.

Yet, the purveyors, and holders of the lexicon, of Political Correctness can call anyone names that disagrees with them.  Jesus says for those who only love those who like you in return, it is meaningless.  Pagans do that.  But this world is crumbling because we do not consider our enemies to even be human, much less like our enemies, far much less love our enemies.

I had someone that I disagreed with severely back many years ago.  I harbored ill feelings toward them.  I heard a voice in my head ask if I loved them.  I said, “Who can love an evil entity?”  I had reduced them down to their idea, not their humanity.  The voice chided, “But we are to love our enemy?”  I replied, “But they cannot be THAT evil and still be human!! Can they?!”  And then the voice said that all humans are given free will and we must love the human within them, even if there is less than a micron of humanity left.

To all human beings out there, friend or foe, I may not agree with you on any subject or I may agree with most of what you say and there may not be a human with whom I agree on everything, but as a human being, even those who do not identify themselves as being human beings, I love you.  And still at times, that is hard to say, but if we do not say it and try to back it up with our actions:

The end is not near,
The END will be HERE.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.